review

It’s been awhile since I talked about getting my new cell phone from work. As you may remember, I chose to get the Samsung Galaxy GS3 over the Apple iPhone 4S, which was what was offered at the time.

I felt that the S3 offered a bigger screen, the same amount and quality of apps, and ran an OS (Android) which I’m more familiar since I’ve yet to become an Apple guy.

So far, I have to say I love it. Here is my mini-review of the Samsung Galaxy S3 (aka Samsung Galaxy S III)

Service – The company provides service on the AT&T network, which is vastly superior to the Sprint network, where I was previously based. Sprint has not yet rolled out 4G, let alone LTE, in our area, so the difference in download and data speeds is remarkable. Not to mention, our house required a data booster to even work adequately with Sprint, but AT&T has so far given me no connection problems.

Screen – Oh, the screen. I remember when my wife got her HTC phone after her Blackberry died (the phone I had the same model of). I thought hers was so big. Then, my S3 came and it’s practically double the screen viewing area. I love it and it has great resolution and color depth as well.

Size – With the screen comes a phone that is much bigger across and up/down than the Blackberry I had. But, it’s quite a bit thinner and doesn’t weigh any more (at least to the touch). I typically don’t carrying things in my pocket, so I was afraid that the S3 would be hard to deal with, but so far it doesn’t bother me at all.

Applications – I love the applications that I can download and use so easily. Pandora was available on the Blackberry but with the unwieldy interface (no touch screen), the slow service, and the spotty coverage, I barely used it or any streaming music coverage. Now, when things get loud at work, it’s easy to pop in the buds and get some music. I also love some of the standbys like Gas Buddy and Angry Birds 🙂

E-mail – Even though Blackberry was designed for the enterprise, it would constantly truncate e-mails. Longer e-mails simply couldn’t be downloaded. This was a point of major frustration for me. This is no longer an issue with my S3. E-mails come through right away, and more importantly, in full.

Swipe – I love that you can type or you can swipe between characters on the keypad.

Commercial – I love the commercial that aired all the time last month where everybody in the Apple line was talking about all the features that the new iPhone was going to have, only to hear that the S3 had even more built in. There’s one guy that’s talking about the earphone jack getting moved to the bottom, and he motions that it blows his mind. I’m not one to buy into marketing, but that kills me every time.

There are a few things I wish were a little bit better that are somewhat steps back:

Spell check – Blackberry had a built in spell checker that would (like Microsoft Word) keep words highlighted that might be spelled incorrectly. With my S3, if you don’t correct the word immediately, it doesn’t keep it highlighted. I’ve yet to find a third party app that works to my satisfaction.

Touch keypad – Having the buttons on the Blackberry took a lot of room, but they made for faster and easier typing than the touchpad. Even though the keys are ‘big’ since the screen is so big, I still make frequent mistakes, more so than with the buttons. Hopefully this is something I can get used to.

All in all, there are a few minor issues but I suppose that’s going to happen with any piece of technology. I don’t think anything is perfect when it comes to a gadget, especially when everybody just works to make their next product better than the competition and their old one. I’m sure in two years or so, I’ll be sick of the S3 and itching for the next big thing. Whatever that will be 🙂 Until then, the S3 is definitely for me!